How to avoid hitting the wall

It's the start of marathon and triathlon season, with races taking place almost every weekend from late August though November. With so many athletes training to compete in events that demand pushing their physical limits for hours on end, it's time to discuss the subject no endurance athlete likes to bring up: hitting the wall.

For runners, the wall comes some-where after the 32-kilometre mark. One minute you're on pace, and the next you're feeling like you're pulling a piano behind you. The legs are heavy, your energy is sapped and your body is screaming to pack it in.

The wall isn't to be confused with plain old fatigue or the discomfort associated with exercise that lasts several hours. It's a physiological phenomenon that hits any exerciser who runs out of the energy needed to fuel the working muscles.

That fuel is derived primarily from carbohydrates, which have a finite amount of storage space in the muscles. Once that's depleted, the muscles find the next-best source of fuel, which is fat. Though the storage capacity for fat far exceeds that for carbohydrates, fat is a slow-burning fuel, which means it can't supply the energy quick enough to keep a runner on pace.

So while carbohydrates remain in plentiful supply, the muscles can maintain a running pace, but when fat is forced to take over as the primary source of fuel, the pace slows, often to a walk or a shuffle.

The solution is to saturate the muscles with carbohydrate in anticipation of a long endurance event.

Back in the day, endurance athletes used to go through a complicated routine of purposefully depleting and storing carbohydrates 10 to 14 days before competing. Thankfully, that's fallen out of favour, with most recommendations advising eating a high-carbohydrate diet the week before an endurance event, effectively filling the muscles with as much stored energy as possible.

Even with the best possible diet, athletes will need to top up their stores of carbohydrate during a distance event that lasts longer than a few hours. That's where sports drinks, gels, gummi candy and other fast-acting sources of carbohydrate come in handy.

For that to be effective, however, you can't wait until you've hit the wall to start gulping down sports drinks. Replenish continually during the race, sipping on sports drinks every 50 to 60 minutes while you run. Or try an old favourite, flat Coke, which has the necessary quick metabolizing sugar but also a hit of caffeine, which helps further delay fatigue and assists in keeping the wall at bay.

Also benefiting from a steady infusion of carbohydrates on race day is the brain, which starts to lag when carbs become depleted. Hence the confusion and reduced cognitive ability that occurs when athletes hit the wall.

The other strategy to keep distance athletes from running out of gas is to monitor pace, especially during the first half of the course. Race-day adrenalin can cause even the most cautious runners to crank up their foot speed, which is a mistake, says Benjamin Rapoport, a biomedical engineer from Harvard Medical School and MIT.

"A 10-second difference in pace per mile could make the difference between success and a dramatic failure," Rapoport reported in a 2010 issue of Science Daily.

Rapoport, himself a marathoner, has developed a formula based on individual aerobic capacity and a couple of other variables, which plots the ideal carbohydrate-saving pace.

The formula is one of the first attempts at calculating a proven strategy to avoid hitting the wall; it can be found at www.EnduranceCalculator. com.

Of course, not all walls encountered by endurance athletes are physiological. The mind can emit signals as strong as the body, which can have just as devastating an effect on athletes running out of steam.

Failure to manage the overwhelming sense of fatigue and the various bodily complaints, like sore muscles, blisters, chafing and cramps, has caused many a marathoner to throw in the towel. Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as internal association, which is when athletes focus on how their body feels.

Elite athletes count on internal association to gauge their pace and guide their race strategy. They also train specifically to learn how to interpret and deal with the pain. Most recreational athletes, however, are not as motivated to embrace the pain associated with extreme effort. They do best when they tune out those strong signals and focus on something other than the discomfort that comes from pushing the body hard.

Listening to music, building a to-do list, focusing on the scenery or singing to yourself are all strategies that come in handy in the later stages of a long race. They're also strategies that can be practised well in advance of race day.

In fact, avoiding the wall is all about preparation. Boosting your carbohydrate intake in the days before the race, eating a high-carb breakfast and sip-ping on sports drinks before standing on the starting line, and planning an effective pacing and fuelling strategy all contribute to keep you from experiencing the energy-sapping, goal-destroying nightmare known as "the wall."

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